Some languages have a "regulatory body" issuing recommendations and guidelines regarding the use of that language.

For example in the case of Spanish it's the Real Academia Española whose status is recognised in all Spanish-speaking countries. The Academy, among other things, publishes a dictionary ("DRAE"), in print and online, which is usually given a lot of prestige (but is not without controversies, of course).

Are there any such authorative—or at least influential—institution(s) or publication(s) for the English language?

Well, there's The Academy, but that only exists in my fevered imagination. Also, it's impossible to control the development of a language; attempts to do so merely develop an official stilted style to adorn government verbiage. Nobody else either learns it well or uses it for any non-satiric purpose.
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John LawlerNov 10 '12 at 0:00

David Foster Wallace has a very interesting discussion of authority in the English language in his essay "Tense Present".
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A EOct 21 '14 at 14:33

3 Answers
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Fortunately or unfortunately, no. There is no regulatory body like the Real Academia Española (or the Académie française, or the many others) deciding what is correct English; English evolves naturally with the changing usage of people. Right and wrong are decided based on describing and analyzing actual usage. (This — "descriptive linguistics" — is so canonical among English linguists that I've seen some of them occasionally find other languages' regulatory bodies an absurd idea. Anyway…)

Among dictionaries, the Oxford English dictionary and the Merriam-Webster dictionary are a couple of the "good" dictionaries (there are others), but note that these, too, have as their goal being reliable indicators of actual usage, and not regulation of, or authority over, language.

In the minds of most people, dictionaries and usage guides are a cipher to some presumed existing canonical, regulated definition of what is correct in the English language. Of course, no such canonical definition exists—grammaticality of English is governed only by the bulk of actual usage.

Most publishers of English dictionaries long ago abandoned any idea that they might set forth what is and is not correct in English—those few that actually did ever hold such a belief were few and far between. Modern English dictionaries, for the most part, are descriptive, although most do offer some degree of usage advice and notes. Merriam-Webster tend to be more descriptive than most, countenancing many usages criticized by others. The American Heritage Dictionary has its “Usage Panel” of experts on language and the usage notes in the dictionary cite percentages of the Usage Panel who approve or disapprove of questionable usages. The Oxford English Dictionary is widely revered as the canonical collection of English words, and it is certainly an amazing work of scholarly endeavor, most interesting in its coverage of historical English. But of course the OED holds no more official status than any other dictionary.

Should also add "Fowler's Modern English Usage". Also there are other good dictionaries like the "Oxford Dictionary of English" (this is a one volume dictionary, /not The OED/). For a more non-US book of style try "The Oxford Manual of Style".
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RichardAug 13 '10 at 12:47

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@Richard - For a more-US dictionary from Oxford, there’s the New Oxford American Dictionary, which doesn’t even include the word “English” in the title.
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Jeffrey L WhitledgeOct 26 '10 at 17:49

This is almost the canonical answer I was asking for here. Bookmarking forthwith :)
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BenjolJan 12 '11 at 11:07

"The Oxford Manual of Style" - an entire book on misusing a single comma?
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mgbDec 7 '11 at 4:16

While there is no offical regulatory body for the English language, one influential regulatory body for American English is the North American Scrabble® Players Association. They provide a list of words acceptable for use in Scrabble® play, and thus judge whether or not a word is a word.

To be fair, they acknowledge that their list is not a complete list of English words, excluding words no longer in use among other things. Also, because of the nature of the Scrabble® game, they do not address words longer than 15 letters. Still, this is, at least in my mind, the most authoritative list of American English words there is. Which is not to say that OED is wrong if they include a word not on that list, but rather that if a word is not on that list, I would not consider it a current American English word.

A few things to note about the Scrabble® lists:

The Official Scrabble Players' Dictionary (OSPD) is meant for use in children's tournaments, and therefore excludes offensive words such as "asshole". It is not a complete list even by Scrabble® standards. As of this writing, the current version is OSPD4.

The Official Tournament and Club Word List (OWL) only includes 2-9 letter words. As of this writing, the current version is OWL2, with the next version expected in 2014. It is also focused on usage in the United States.

The Long List is a supplement to OWL2. It contains 10-15 letter words.

The Collins Scrabble Words list (CSW) is a superset of OWL2 that adds words (and spellings) used outside of the US. The current version is CSW12

At the moment, you can access electronic versions of these lists via the free study program Zyzzyva. The lists from Zyzzyva include cursory definitions of one sense of the word. The definitions are provided only to satisfy basic curiosity about the word, not to be in any way comprehensive.

On the subject of authorities, it is worth noting what authorities were used to compile the Scrabble® word lists. OWL2 was compiled with reference to:

These are, as you say, authoritative within the Scrabble community. Outside that, I doubt whether most people have heard of them, much less rely on them.
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TimLymingtonMay 5 '12 at 20:50

@Tim, you miss my point about the dictionaries they consulted in drawing up the lists being influential. The fact that those dictionaries (and not, for example, NOAD or Webster’s Third New International Dictionary) were chosen is significant in that it provides actual evidence of influence.
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Old ProMay 5 '12 at 21:05